Then was direction to fire from the identified pod. Identified direction is drawn using a line of stationary shots, though they are still deadly. This showed a few issues such as if you attack from the bottom of the station the station preferred to shoot straight down, making it easy to hit an open core, while if you attack from the top the station preferred to shot at an angle, making it easy to take out the pods.draconian_20170615_direction_test_2.bin(32KB)downloads: 26

After a few iterations I go the targeting to work much better. In this build the line of stationary shots is no longer deadly as I extended the line.draconian_20170617_direction_test_3.bin(32KB)downloads: 25

While the routines are functional there's a few things I need to do before they're finalized:

decide if the firing should be from the 2 pods closest to the player rather than 3 pods (the closest pod and it's neighbors). I'm leaning towards 2 pods as I often see one of the neighbors shooting slightly through the station.

Thanks for posting the steps, it is neat to see the pod AI visualized.

Usually I'd be posting the source as well, but CDF's still a work in progress. We don't want the driver to get out until we've finalized it as it's possible we'll have to change how it works, and thus break backwards compatibility in Stella like we did with BUS.

Yes, I was flying left to right, the pod at "A" fired thru the station just as I crossed the threshold between lower left intact pod and the destroyed lower right one. my ship would have been dead centre between the lower two pod spots

You could still do 3 pods firing, you'd just have to detect if a shot will go through the station and not have the "problem pod" fire at that angle. A lesser angle could be used, however inaccurate it may be. Or not fire at all.

Had a busy Sunday - my folks & I headed down to met my sister & brother-in-law for lunch at The Pumphouse in Victoria, Texas in celebration of Father's Day and my sister's upcoming birthday. Victoria's midway between Houston and Corpus Christi(where my sister lives).

Wha does the arcade game do?

Not sure what the arcade does, playtesting while trying to figure that out results in my ship getting destroyed That's one of the reasons for Rules of the Game, to get community feedback to build a better understanding of how Bosconian works.

Additionally there'd be the tradeoff between extra code for "sometimes fire from the 3rd pod" or "space for better sounding samples". In this instance, I'd most likely choose the samples.

You could still do 3 pods firing, you'd just have to detect if a shot will go through the station and not have the "problem pod" fire at that angle. A lesser angle could be used, however inaccurate it may be. Or not fire at all.
Wha does the arcade game do?